The art of camera design and manufacture has progressed a long way since George Eastman first developed photographic film. The size and weight of cameras have both diminished greatly, thanks to the advent of new materials of construction. In particular, plastics have been adapted to provide many of the internal and external parts of modern cameras. The use of plastics have enabled manufacturers to employ much lighter components, and the improved technology in plastics has enabled the strength of plastics to be improved to the point where they can readily replace parts formerly required to be of metal.
As advances have been made in the use of plastics, and also in the photographic sciences, it has become possible to provide ever smaller cameras so that now it is common to carry a camera in one's shirt pocket or purse. One of the difficulties that has arisen is that plastic surfaces, especially molded plastic surfaces, tend to be quite smooth and difficult to grip. Given the small size of cameras, and possible difficult conditions such as cold temperatures, it is important that the camera be readily grippable by the photographer. One area where plastics remain generally inferior to metal is in impact resistance. Chances are a dropped plastic camera will never be repaired or repairable.
Thus there is a need for a plastic camera which provides a suitable gripping surface so that the camera is not easily dropped. Various methods have been employed to solve this problem including designing the macro shape of the surface to fit the hand or providing striations or ridges or painting the surface. These methods have not been altogether satisfactory.
Designing the shape of the surface is made particularly difficult where the object of the design is miniaturization. There is not much design volume to work with. Striations or ridges complicate the manufacturing process, are often readily worn off, and often suffer from the problem of being effective in only one direction. Painting of a plastic surface presents not only the problems associated with environmental and health concerns, but also typically provides a relatively thin surface that shows wear much before the rest of the camera.
It is therefore a problem to be solved to provide a camera which has an improved slip resistant surface to improve the photographers grip on the camera during handling and to provide a method of manufacturing same such a camera.